


Burgeoning

by thirteenghosts (newsbypostcard)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, First five-year mission, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/thirteenghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Enterprise is sent to the planet Vilix following a natural disaster, Hikaru Sulu doesn't exactly expect to find love. But then, if there was ever a species to make him fall for someone -- let's be honest -- it would be an asexually-reproducing, agender, plant-insect-humanoid hybrid, wouldn't it? Suddenly he finds himself visiting sickbay more and more often, and in no time at all--</p><p> </p><p>  <em>“Bones, I need my helmsman,” came Jim’s increasingly-exasperated comms over the following days. “He’s ignoring me. Tell him you’re either booting him out of medbay or I’m booting him out the cargo bay doors.”</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Burgeoning

They’d landed on Vilix later than they would have liked, and by then already half the population had been decimated by the brush fires of the harsh summer. The scene was horrifying; despite that the fires were almost out by the time of their arrival, the facilities weren’t remotely numerous enough to help those who had been too exhausted to keep flying out of the reach of the flames, and badly injured Vilix lay everywhere, unassisted. 

The crew of the Enterprise spent ten hours on the planet, with Leonard doing the best he could to distribute resources to those capable of patching up in one of the larger settlements; but the survival rate was only about 50/50 even with those the medical crew was able to get to. The air smelled of singed wings and burned flesh, and by the time Leo found the time to tend to one of the more severely-injured and destabilizing Vilix, time was already running thin.

“Not ready, Jim,” he muttered distractedly as the captain reappeared beside him.

“How much time?”

“For this guy alone? An hour at least.”

“We cannot delay any longer, captain,” Spock advised. “We must get to the summit or we may lose the opportunity for ceasefire with the Caledonians.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Leo pledged.

“Then we’re taking him with us,” Jim said briskly. “Load him up and any others you’re going to stubbornly insist on tending to; we gotta go.”

“Not so fast.” Leo peered up at him through raised eyebrows. “I’m not sure we should take him away from his home planet, especially given how little I know about this species--”

“I know what you’re going to say next,” Jim interrupted, “and you can forget it, Bones. I need my CMO on board if we’re going to be staring down the Caledonians.”

“Now that’s confidence-inspiring.” 

Jim threw out his arms, clearly not in the mood for banter. “What do you want me to say? There’s a forty percent chance they’ll try to blow us up the second we arrive, and you need to be there if they do. Plus we have no idea how long these talks are actually going to take.” He gestured at the Vilix. “We’ll bring him right back after the summit.”

“What I was going to say before you rudely interrupted was: Are you sure we should take him away from any family he might have left here?”

“Ze,” Sulu specified suddenly at Leo’s shoulder. “Vilix are single-gendered. They would use neutral pronouns. And Vilix are also asexually-reproducing, so they don’t have families in the same sense you’re thinking of. I don’t think ze’s undergone individuation yet, look, hir skin is unfractured by any budding that might’ve occurred. Ze might not have anyone left after this … catastrophe.” Sulu gestured vaguely into the moaning tent full of injured Vilix.

Leo regarded Sulu carefully. “You know about the Vilix?” he asked, nodding Chistine over to help him hoist the Vilix onto the stretcher.

“Not really,” Sulu admitted. “Not much.”

“Already more than me,” Leo said shortly. “Can you do without your pilot, Jim? I’d like Sulu in sickbay with me if I’m going to try to save a life on the run here. Not to mention a plant-humanoid in space. Can’t wait to see what happens in the absence of solar light.”

“Chekov can handle the next stage easily, Captain,” Sulu assured Jim. “I’d like to help Doctor McCoy.”

Jim gave Sulu a searching glance before hoisting a crate onto his shoulder and nodding. “So be it, Mister Sulu, but report back to the Bridge before we approach Caledonia. I need my best man to bring us in, and immediately out again if needed.”

“Aye, sir,” Sulu agreed easily before leaning in toward Leo. “But I should warn you,” he continued, “I really do better with non-sentient plants.”

“So far as I can tell, Lieutenant, the Vilix are humanoid insect-plants who breed asexually through their skin.” He shot Sulu a look and nodded at Chapel to help him guide the hovering stretcher into the air. “I’d say we’re both a bit out of our league.”

\-----

But Sulu had known what he was doing -- at least more so than he’d thought -- and their combined knowledge had meant that the Vilix had healed enough to wake up only hours later, after Sulu had returned to the Bridge. Leo had done his best to calm hir down, but explaining everything from the fact that they were in space to the fact of spaceship healers to the specifics of the Federation’s help-not-hinder mandate of its manifesto quickly sent Leo for a tailspin into joint embarrassment and confusion, given the Vilix’s broken Standard and his total lack of comprehension of anything about the Vilix language. “Try to relax,” he placated; then, satisfied of the Vilix’s relative stability, opted to abandon his PADD in Chapel’s hands in favour of running off to his office to cram as much research about Vilix biology as he could into his head.

But Sulu had shown up again before Leo’d made much progress, the Enterprise now having been parked as close to Caledonia as common sense had allowed. Leo re-emerged briskly from his office and strode toward Sulu with great intention, happy for the relief; but before Leo had the opportunity to open his mouth, Sulu was already uttering something in a language Leo hadn’t heard before, holding one palm facing the ceiling outstretched in front of him.

Leo watched as the Vilix raised a shaky arm and hovered it over Sulu’s hand; then, simultaneously, they each uttered the same two syllables, and their appendages fell to their sides.

With an impressed frown, Leo puttered around and tended to his other patients, preferring to let Sulu glean whatever information he could in the Vilix native tongue; and twenty minutes later, Sulu excused himself with a polite nod and took Leo aside.

“Ze says ze’s not in as much pain as earlier, so whatever you gave hir is working. Beyond that, apart from feeling badly agitated and displaced, ze suggested that time is -- this is hard to translate -- the best medicine, I guess, at this point. Just bring loads of water on the hour, in spray form and in literal buckets, if you can manage it. The Vilix have a very particular relationship with water and, even though it may cause hir tremendous discomfort, you have to leave hir to bathe hirself. You sealed the burns, I assume?”

Leo nodded, and Sulu did the same. “They’re gonna scar no matter what. I think that’s inevitable. Don’t try to regen them; it may cause more damage. Vilix skin is very delicate.” Sulu glanced behind him at the Vilix and clucked his tongue. “Tragic, really. Ze’ll be an outcast if ze returns to hir planet. Reproduction is, in Vilix canon, the ultimate end, and with burns over that much of hir body it’ll be an intensely difficult and constrained process.”

Leo nodded again, impressed at how much information Sulu had picked up about the Vilix in a matter of mere hours. “You’re a quick study.”

Sulu cracked a sad smile. “When it comes to plants, yes. And maybe combat and machines.”

“People, too. No one seems to grasp the social dynamic of the ship as well as you.”

His smile widened. “I appreciate that,” he said sincerely, then hitched a thumb behind him. “I’m gonna hop down to Engineering and see if Scotty has any ideas for rigging up some solar lighting system of some kind. I think hir skin’s still too warm and sensitive to need it for a while, so don’t panic, but if ze appears to be, erm, _wilting_ , please hail me immediately.”

Leo’s lips twitched into a distant smile as he gave Sulu a subordinate nod. “Aye, lieutenant.”

Sulu grinned and turned to go, but suddenly pulled Leo back by the arm as he stepped aside to return to his patients. “And hir name is Vilix’sita, by the way. Do hir a favour and give the traditional greeting next time you wander over there? It’s an outstretched palm facing up, and the phrase ‘Lix’ta’ uttered when ze reciprocates the gesture. Roughly, means ‘camaraderie’. Obviously ze’s figured out that you mean well by now, but the cultural acknowledgement will make hir feel more at home.”

“You’re a good man, Sulu,” Leo told him; and as Sulu paused to give the Vilix his greeting on the way out, the reciprocated smiles on their faces suggested that Sulu would be spending quite a bit of time in sick bay over the coming days.

\-----

Leo was not wrong.

It was another two days before Sulu came in to rig up, with Scotty’s help, an adjustable solar lighting panel over Vilix’sita’s bed -- but that had not been the only time Sulu had returned to sickbay since Vilix’sita had been taken aboard, and by that time they had established an unmistakably fond friendship. Vilix’sita appeared very pleased when Scotty greeted hir in the customary Vilix way before getting started, and seemed to gain energy almost immediately after the panel was installed. “Helluva mate Sulu’s got,” Scotty chirped at Leo, winking at him on his way out of sickbay; and Leo smiled distantly before approaching Vilix’sita himself.

“How are you feeling today?” he asked, glancing at Sulu who’d perched himself on his usual bench beside the bed; but Vilix’sita seemed not to require translation.

“All right,” Vilix’sita replied serenely. “The sun lamp helps.”

Leo nodded and referred to his charts. “How’s the pain level?”

“Medium, but manageable.”

He frowned at Vilix’sita. “To be expected. You’d let me know if there was anything in particular bothering you?” Ze nodded, and Leo made a note. “Your Standard’s much improved, too.”

“Hikaru has been kind to teach me,” ze replied. “He learned my language very quickly. I am returning the duty.”

Leo blinked at them. “It took me two semesters to become fluent in any off-world language.”

Sulu smirked shyly. “How motivated were you?” he asked quietly; and Leo took the point, retreating back into his office as soon as his check on Vilix’sita’s vitals allowed.

But Sulu’s frequent presence in sickbay had its adverse consequences, too. “Bones, I need my helmsman,” came Jim’s increasingly-exasperated comms over the following days. “He’s ignoring me. Tell him you’re either booting him out of medbay or I’m booting him out the cargo bay doors.” 

Authority was a complex mechanism on the Enterprise, and though Jim was well-respected, he was also far less menacing than Leo tended to be; what would have taken five tries with Jim generally took only one with Leo, and as such Jim tended to call liberally upon him when efficiency was of the essence. Leo was therefore faced repeatedly with the regretful task of interrupting extended conversations between Sulu and Vilix’sita, which were getting longer and more animated as the days wore on.

“Captain needs you on the Bridge,” Leo would tell him in the same low, professional tone every time -- when Sulu was just sitting conversationally on a stool, when Sulu tended to Vilix’sita’s wounds with the botanists’ complement to the doctor’s healing, when Sulu was the one to help hir start physical therapy. The negotiations with the Caledonians were proving lengthy and tense, and Jim tended to call Sulu back every time the need for immediate escape loomed imminent; and Leo, for one, did not want to wind up hit by missiles that could have been avoided by a timely escape.

And Sulu, bless him, was respectful of the fact sickbay was Leo’s domain and tended to end the conversation as soon as Leo asked him to; but apart from the fact that, yes, he did like the idea of being very far away sooner rather than later in the event of sudden Caledonian hostility, he was also in a position to notice certain intimate details about Sulu’s interactions with Vilix’sita that the Captain surely wasn’t, and Leo was accordingly sympathetic even as he carried out Jim’s request to get Sulu’s ass back to the Bridge.

This pattern continued until Jim slipped into his quarters one evening with a PADD displaying a form labeled _Requisition for Safe Harbor_.

“What do you know about the Vilix in medbay that Sulu’s been paying so much attention to?” Jim asked him.

Leo stared at Jim and the PADD he was waving aloft and felt his eyebrows climb higher on his brow. “Kindhearted, strong; probably hardworking given the opportunity. Apparently as keen on Sulu as he is on hir.”

“Yeah, so I noticed.” Jim collapsed on Leo’s bed, boneless with the exhaustion of the last five days of negotiating. Finally a tentative peace had been established with the Caledonians, with the papers (of both parties) to be signed the next morning, and Leo knew Jim probably hadn’t slept properly through the entire ordeal. “You’d back this?”

“Vilix’sita’s harbor? Yeah, I mean, from what Sulu tells me, the burns on hir body probably aren’t going to completely heal, and the way Vilix reproduce means that Vilix’sita will be marginalized if we take hir back to hir planet.”

“Ze’s not in danger, surely. The Vilix seem like gentle people.”

“Well, yeah. But look -- ze can’t fly anymore; wings burned off. Can’t reproduce very well. The way the Vilix economy works depends on at least one of those two things, on numbers. Vilix’sita can neither contribute to nor perpetuate the economy, so why would a society trying to rebuild after a disaster feel compelled to support hir? If ze feels a connection with Sulu and can provide some service for the ship in return, why not harbor hir?”

Jim made a noise of interest against the mattress, but soon reverted to a grunt. “Regulation 65.25 states--”

“Oh for crying out loud, Jim, they’re falling in love, can’t you see that? To hell with regulation.” Jim propped himself up suddenly and stared at Leo with wide eyes, and Leo softened and smirked at the surprise on his face. “With hir skills in agriculture, ze’ll almost definitely generate more food than ze can use up here. Throw Sulu a bone on this. You haven’t seen them together. Ze can contribute, and ze has a place to stay. Even if Sulu is exaggerating what the circumstances would be like for hir back on Vilix, I’d let it happen. I suggest that you don’t want your first helmsman angry with you right now, depending on how confident you are that those papers will actually get signed tomorrow.”

Jim grunted again and pulled himself with great effort further into the depths of the bed. “Regulation is regulation, Bones.”

“Okay, Spock.”

Jim’s voice was muffled, face buried amid the pillows. “Whoa, hey. Low blow. Way to kick a captain when he’s down.”

Leo smiled and lurched out of his chair, sliding beside Jim on the bed before kicking a leg over him and running his hands over his back under his shirt. “I know your captainly sensibilities are informing you right now that rules prevent wars, but this is about looove, Jim boy. The foil of war. You and I both know that you disregard regulation the second it becomes convenient to you, also known as, the second you care enough about something to break the rules for its fruition. Even if the Vilix hadn’t asked for assistance, you’d have broken the Prime Directive if the disaster had been brought to your attention.” Leo leaned his elbow into Jim’s back to cut off his reply. “You should consider giving Sulu the same leverage.”

“It’s been a week,” Jim muttered weakly, appearing utterly compromised by Leo’s ambition to work the knots out of his back. “How in love can they really be?”

“In the three years we’ve known Sulu, he’s been everyone’s support -- including ours -- and never asked for anything for himself. I’ve seen him on a dozen first dates but never a second, so I have absolutely no comparison to offer it against. But I get the impression that Sulu keeps _shirking his duties_ and _returning to sickbay several times daily_ for reasons that amount to more than idle curiosity.”

“Yeah actually, now that you mention it, I’m not too pleased with Sulu right now, so --”

“Aw, come on, Jim. Where’s your sense of compassion?”

“Still on shoreleave.”

“Look, come down with me tomorrow and watch them interact with one another. Then make your decision. Sulu’s taking responsibility for any fallout that may occur--”

“If every crew member asked for a special exception because the mate of their choice happened to have been taken aboard during … a tense, life-risking, weeklong negotiation … on account of almost burning to death in a horrific … natural disaster that ... left them permanently disfigured and unable to contribute to their world’s economy...”

“You just convinced yourself, didn’t you?”

Jim was silent for several moments as Leo dug his thumbs between his shoulderblades, then mumbled distantly, “I’ll come see for myself.”

“Good,” Leo said, setting the PADD aside and lifting Jim’s shirt higher on his back and he leaned to press his lips along Jim’s spine. “I don’t think you’ll regret it.”

\-----

Leo was, once again, not wrong.

The next day, Jim signed the papers with Sulu and Vilix’sita only hours after successfully signing ceasefire papers with the Caledonians -- “On the condition you stop shirking your goddamned work duties, Lieutenant, I mean it,” Jim warned, to Sulu’s immediate and beaming “Yes, sir” -- and hours later, Vilix’sita was moved out of sickbay to continue hir recovery in Sulu’s quarters.

“Now you’re sure about this, Sulu?” Leo asked him seriously. “There’s nothing that’s going to be easy about partnering up with an asexually-reproducing Vilix recovering from serious injury after only a week.”

Sulu shrugged. “What’s supposed to be easy about it? We live on the Enterprise. Literally nothing is easy here.”

But despite being sleep-deprived, Sulu did in fact seem to find it exceptionally easy to adjust. Used to a lush planetary environment, Vilix’sita found hirself right at home in amidst the garden Sulu had spent two years developing in his quarters, and Leo found their cheerful bantering with one another in Vilix to follow him every time he went to Sulu’s quarters to check in.

“I hope that wasn’t the word ‘doctor’ followed by the words ‘captain’ and ‘betrothed’ I just heard,” he mumbled one day; and upon exchanging a glance with one another, Sulu and Vilix’sita fell chuckling into silence.

“All medical queries aside, how are things going?” Leo would ask Sulu separately, usually during one of his strictly unnecessary visits to the Bridge.

“Excellently,” Sulu always said with an easy grin, talking about plans for their garden and Vilix’sita’s recent increased mobility quite happily and for as long as Leo would let him. Meanwhile, in the days after Leo finally declared an end to hir bedrest, Vilix’sita was soon seen all around the Enterprise in a lazy tour with hir hand clasped in Sulu’s as he pointed out the ship’s various levels, functions, and crew. He introduced hir to whomever they happened to pass as they went, and in no time at all ze was regularly spotted wandering through the halls while Sulu was on shift, familiarizing hirself with the layout of the ship. Shortly thereafter, Vilix’sita began bringing trays of produce to rooms on individual order and to the mess as a whole; and it wasn’t long at all before ze had instituted hirself as an honorary crewmember.

“Ze should join Starfleet,” Jim one day articulated around a slice of fresh radish. “Hate to see hir go after the mission ends if our civilian quota comes in over.”

“Just because you get your stinking radishes?”

“ _No,_ ” Jim replied petulantly, but after a pause sliced himself another. “I like hir! Very easy to talk to. We talked about the merits of interspecies cultural exchange as an integral part of conflict negotiation. I’ve never had conversations as forthright with Spock as I do with hir.”

Leo smirked and bit back a comment about Spock’s roboticism. “I don’t think ze has anything to worry about in terms of requisition off the ship,” he replied instead.

Indeed, Vilix’sita and Sulu had approached Leo some days earlier on the topic of Vilix’sita’s unexpected pending individuation -- in other words, “a _bud!_ ”, as Sulu had blurted excitedly while pointing at Vilix’sita’s side upon their entry into sickbay.

“Just one, I think,” Vilix’sita reported as Leo examined the bud that was breaking through over hir left hip, “but one will certainly do.”

“Everything looks good,” Leo replied, nodding, “except that your scars are going to strain badly in the later stages of the budding process. We may need to admit you into longer-term care nearer to individuation, but you’re obviously healed enough that your body has made it back to as normal a baseline as you’re going to get. I’m surprised, to be honest,” he continued, raising an eyebrow at Sulu’s grinning bounce behind hir, “to see this, although pleasantly so. It was medically improbable that you would bud at all, let alone so quickly.”

“My body is signalling much contentment to me here,” Vilix’sita told him as Sulu splayed his hands over his face with elation. Leo chuckled as Vilix’sita leaned back to grin at Hikaru when he began making overjoyed choking noises. “We are considering a coparenting arrangement,” ze told Leo.

“Really! That’s fantastic news; congratulations.” Leo was distantly unsure as to whether congratulations was in order, but Sulu threw his arms around Vilix’sita’s neck as they beamed at him, so he assumed he’d said the right thing. “Have you considered how to make that Federation-legal? It seems a divergence from the usual Vilix model to have two parents for individuated buds--”

“Not so!” Vilix’sita corrected him enthusiastically. “I am told there is a saying -- ‘it takes a village’? It very much takes a village to raise Vilix offspring on-planet. Hikaru assures me that the Enterprise is much like the settlements on Vilix in terms of community -- and after spending these past months here I must find I agree -- but it is clear we value one another foremost, and I wish to honour that valuation.” Vilix’sita squeezed at Sulu’s hands around hir neck. “In the absence of my community, I would prefer to entrust Hikaru with my offspring first for when I am not available.”

Leo nodded appreciatively. “You have a trust, that’s respectable. There is still the issue of making that legal.”

“Marius says I can adopt, or that we can marry before individuation,” Sulu provided. “I worry about the adoption option, because there’s a period after individuation where I’ll have no parental rights while the legal details are sorted out, which Marius again says may not be a straightforward process given the conservative bend in Federation administration lately, so I prefer to marry to jump over that particular string of red tape.”

“Which is absurd, Hikaru, because even if you are not immediately afforded parental rights I will still be perfectly able on my own--”

“It’s not absurd. You keep emphasizing community, and we just don’t have that at our disposal. I don’t want the authorities to try to involve themselves if, god forbid, something goes wrong.”

“It is not like what I understand human birth to be. I am not going to be lying useless after individuation.”

“Well, you might be,” Leo interjected. “We don’t know how your injuries will allow you to function as your bud expands.”

Sulu gestured to Leo as though thanking him for his point. “So I think we should marry now to avoid any question as to care if you’re bedridden--”

“I taste disgust when met with this idea.”

“I know you do, Sita, but--”

“I cannot be bedridden in any case, because I require use of the hatchling pond--”

“You know what I mean.”

“Your historic religions offend me with their narrow language.”

“Oh, this again. It’s largely a civic procedure now, Sita.”

“Tell me Doctor, how do you view human marriage customs?”

Hikaru pointed rudely at Leo. “Don’t answer that,” he requested firmly.

“I refuse to get involved,” Leo promised, hands held aloft.

“I take it he is not fond either?” Vilix’sita stated pointedly, blinking heavily at Sulu as though to make a point.

Sulu gave a vaguely pained smile and pressed his forehead gently against Vilix’sita’s cheek. “We clearly have some details to sort out,” he told Leo quietly. “But we will choose one eventually, and both are good options. We … actually have a favour to ask regardless of which we decide on.”

“Oh.” Leo blinked. “Sure, I’ll see what I can do. What do you need?”

“In the event that we choose marriage,” Vilix’sita said with a flat tone, “Marius will carry out the procedure, since her duties as spiritual advisor aboard the Enterprise seem to involve overseeing this archaic partnering ritual -- but in addition we will need a witness.” Vilix’sita smiled. “We heard from the Captain that you fought for my stay aboard the Enterprise, and we are grateful. We would be honoured if you would be that witness.”

Leo blinked and felt his lips quirk into something approaching a smile. “It would be _my_ honour,” he replied, offering his palm outstretched for Vilix’sita in the traditional extension of camaraderie, which ze reciprocated contentedly.

“Thanks, Leo,” Sulu said grinningly, and Leo gave a flattered nod. “Now on the other hand, if we choose adoption, since Sita will be in your care due to the complications associated with hir injuries -- and, okay, and this is kind of a big request, but there’s no one else we really trust on this point -- if anything happens to Sita, god forbid, and I can’t care for the offspring if I’m being blocked by whatever bullshit the Federation might try to pull, we would feel more comfortable if we had your word that you’d look out for the offspring on our behalves.” Sulu looked suddenly vaguely nervous. “Apart from being the one most familiar with Vilix biology and therefore the best tuned-in to whether anything weird was going on with hir--” Sulu gave Leo a sympathetic look and took a deep breath before continuing -- “we also hear that you have personal experience caring for newborns outside of your capacity as doctor, which puts you in a minority on this ship.”

Leo stared blankly at Sulu and processed this request, arms crossed. “You hear this, do you?”

“It is known,” Sulu corroborated slyly.

“Who the hell is responsible for that vicious rumour?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Is that code for ‘you want to keep your job’?”

Sulu’s lips quirked. “Between us, it was actually Spock who mentioned it.”

Leo frowned. “Really?”

“I guess Uhura is wondering whether or not kids are a viable option in this career path, and he’s worried about competition between his compulsion to repopulate the Vulcan species versus his affection for Nyota. Wanted to know if I thought talking to you was a good idea, since he heard you had a daughter and, quote, ‘might be able to offer insight on the benefits of raising offspring for offspring’s sake’.”

Leo gave a light snort. “Good god. When was he talking about this?”

Sulu waved a hand. “A while ago. I don’t know if it’s still an issue. Kirk probably told Spock about her, but doubtfully anyone else. I advised Spock not to talk to you on the subject, by the way, since you’re clearly very tight-lipped about it, but he might still anyway. Sorry about that.” Leo frowned, then shrugged; he found this deeply annoying, but acceptable. “Point being,” Sulu continued, “you’re really the only one we would trust with our offspring beyond ourselves.”

“It takes a village,” Vilix’sita offered again, politely.

Leo blinked repeatedly, a weight settling in his chest. “I can’t make promises,” he muttered eventually, unable to completely unclench his teeth. “I’m still CMO aboard a large vessel captained by a daredevil who plays chicken with his enemies more often than should be legal, so my attention would not be complete. But I -- I’ll do what I can. Sure.”

And it was probably worth it, Leo thought, to see Vilix’sita and Sulu leaning into one another so happily; but he was nevertheless reminded, as Jim chomped away at his radishes, that his own private affairs were his own private affairs, and waited only scant seconds until Jim had swallowed his food before slapping him upside the head.

“Ow! What the fuck?! Insubordination, Commander!”

“And why in fresh hell did you tell Spock about Joanna, exactly?”

“Jesus Christ! Where is this coming from?”

“Don’t deflect,” Leo warned; and he contented himself with eating several tomatoes out of Jim’s stash of vegetables as he stammered to defend his disclosure.

\-----

In the end, they got married _after_ Vilix’rela’s adoption had gone through.

Leo was astonished to find that Vilix’sita’s skin mended itself with considerable ease following individuation, with healthy flesh even covering back up some of the area that had been scarred in the fires -- “Vilix are resilient,” Vilix’sita told Leo wisely -- and two budding yields later, Vilix’sita was even able to individuate twins.

“They’re _really_ happy here,” Sulu told Leo exhaustedly shortly after the fourth was born.

But as Vilix’rela and hir siblings aged, it became clear that Vilix’sita was concerned about their education as to their culture; and given the prevalence of Standard aboard the Enterprise, Leo suspected that even those aspects Vilix’sita could provide on hir own inadequately covered the scope of Vilix society.

It was late one night when Leo and Jim had holed up in the ship’s lounge close to its closing with full intention to close it down themselves long after the crew had been kicked out at the usual hour that Sulu had wandered in, following the sounds of their voices.

Jim’s sentence fell abruptly off at the sight of him, and he suddenly straightened in a misguided attempt to look as though he wasn’t three drinks deep. “Everything all right, Mister Sulu?”

“I hope so, Captain, but I’m not on shift so I couldn’t tell you specifics.” Sulu suddenly registered the scene before him and jolted to reality. “I’m interrupting. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sulu,” Leo drawled, kicking his feet off a chair and pulling it out from the table. “Why don’t you join us?”

“No, I couldn’t, I’m just taking a walk to clear my head.”

“At 0300h? Bullshit, Lieutenant. You look haggard. We are also haggard. Come join the haggard club.” Jim patted the chair less gently than he likely intended, and after a pause Sulu approached the table.

“Drink?” Leo offered.

Sulu looked as though he was about to decline, but then eyed the tumbler with interest. “Bourbon?”

“From a barrel and everything.”

Sulu’s lips quirked into a half-smile. “Just one, then.”

“Good man,” Jim said, clapping him on the shoulder as he sat down. “Please forget I’m your captain for the next several hours, because I am sure to make an embarrassment of myself if Bones pours me another, which he should, because Klingons.”

“Remember when you could hold your liquor?” Leo asked him with amusement.

“Ah, youth.”

Leo mumbled something about ‘can’t talk’ and ‘barely thirty’ as he handily caught the glass Jim slid toward him. “So what’s got you seeking company at 0300h before an alpha shift, Sulu?”

Sulu sighed heavily and took a sip of the bourbon before looking abruptly to Jim. “We still on course for Minshara?”

Jim closed his eyes, then nodded. “Yeah. Have to pick up those escape shuttles after the Cheyenne accident. Why?”

“Can we afford a day?”

“I don’t see why not, although Spock probably does. We can ignore him, though. I’m the Captain, you know.”

Sulu nodded with a hint of a smile. “Can we swing by Vilix?”

Leo cringed heavily and leaned back in his chair as Jim’s eyes flitted over to him, assessing and mirroring his gravity. “Yeah, definitely. Family issue?”

Sulu again nodded, this time more slowly. “Sita wants to take the kids back for a while.”

“How long’s a while?” Leo asked softly.

“Until further notice.” Sulu took a drink.

“Shit,” Jim muttered. “You have parental rights, though, right?”

“It’s not like that,” Sulu said, shaking his head. “I think it’s important. I don’t want my Vilix kids to be growing up without any idea of what it’s like to be Vilix. The Federation is a melting pot, even though it tries not to be. Human culture still defines us. Standard is of Terran origin, for fuck’s sake. I don’t want them to melt. I want them to be their Vilix selves.” He set his glass heavily down on the table and ran his hands over his face. “But I want to be myself, too, with my career and my people. I wouldn’t last on Vilix permanently, and Sita agrees. We both decided it’s best to separate for a while. I stay here, ze goes home.”

A silence settled, and Leo exhaled heavily. “You’re worried that now that hir ability to individuate has improved, ze’ll never want to come back.”

Sulu let several seconds pass before replying, “I sincerely doubt ze’ll ever want to come back for good.”

Jim rested his face on his fist against the table and looked at Sulu with sympathy. “That’s rough, man.”

He nodded. “It’s not like we don’t want to be together. We do. It’s just best for everyone’s flourishing if we don’t. So basically, this hurts like hell.” He took another drink. “But everyone on this ship faces the same issues, right? Lots of people have spouses on-planet, and they make it work.”

“Barely,” Jim said; and Leo shot him an angry glance. “Oops. I mean, it is definitely possible, don’t get me wrong. But you’ve gotta make that effort, Sulu, if you’re as serious about your family as you seem to be. Every shore leave, you’re going down to Vilix. Every time we pass by and it doesn’t cost us to divert, you invite your family back on the ship. You tell us when you need this. We’ll make it happen.”

Sulu glanced at Leo, then frowned at Jim. “Seriously?”

“Hell yeah! Family comes first, always. I don’t have much of one beyond my crew, but they’re the one thing I can’t lose, right? You can’t lose yours, either. Don’t you dare. Keep ‘em close, Sulu. Do what you need to do. I can only respect that.” Jim furrowed his brow. “It just can’t interfere with any negotiations, because I need you to get us out of there if and when things go south. Especially with Klingons.”

Sulu nodded and gave a slow smile. “I know,” he said, exchanging a look with Leo.

“Fucking Klingons. Seriously. Did you know we got singed? By their photons? While we were trying to escape?”

“I am sorry,” Sulu said seriously.

“No no, I don’t blame you, lieutenant, you were fantastic -- but shit. _Klingons,_ right?”

“Alright!” Leo declared, setting his glass heavily on the table and forcing Jim to jolt to attention. “And this concludes ‘drinking with your superiors’ for this week. Any further questions, Mister Sulu?”

“Uh, just the one. Do … do you talk to your family much?” he asked Leo.

Leo’s eyes fluttered shut, and he felt his face close off. “Family?” he intoned, a thin smile painting itself onto his features as he regarded Sulu skeptically. “What’s that?” He knocked back the last of the bourbon in his glass and forced the sardonic tone from his voice. “But that’s two parts my fault and two parts Jocelyn’s. You and Vilix’sita won’t have that problem. Y’hear?”

“Yes, Commander,” Sulu replied with a smile, and finished his own drink as he pushed back from the table. “Thanks for the bourbon.”

“Anytime,” Leo said, and Sulu clapped his shoulder in appreciation as he made his way toward the exit. “Goodnight, Captain.”

“Goodnight, Sulu. You’ll set your own course?”

“Yes sir. Shouldn’t be delayed more than twenty hours.”

“Good man.”

The doors swung open and shut, and Leo nudged at Jim’s leg under the table. “You doing all right in there?”

“Fuckin’ hate Klingons,” Jim replied, resting his head on his arms.

“Okay, Captain Klingon. Time for bed.”

“I have called you some heinous nicknames over the years but nothing ever as bad as Captain Klingon, Bones. I don’t feel that’s called for.” 

Leo coaxed him to his feet and grabbed the bottle off the table. “At least you were only negotiating with them. That hostage was livid. Had to be restrained so that he didn’t kill me for saving his life.”

“Ugh, Bones. I always forget how fucked up your job is.”

“It’s all right. It is my job.”

Jim threw his arm around Leo’s shoulder and leaned against him as they left the lounge. “Klingons will never be able to assimilate with the Federation.”

“Probably true,” Leo agreed, tugging him closer against him.

They walked through the halls and took in the early-morning stillness of the delta shift in relative silence until they had paused to wait for the lift. Then Jim turned abruptly to Bones and asked, too loudly, “Hey, do you want to have some kids?”

“‘Have some kids’? Christ. No.”

“Want to get married?”

“Definitely not.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Jim tugged at his neck and pressed his lips to his forehead. “But you’re my family anyway, okay?”

Leo huffed. “I know that, Jim.”

Jim stepped into the lift and stared at him with piercing eyes. “Then don’t make that fucking face when people ask you about family and pretend like you don’t have any.”

Leo blinked in surprise and found himself rooted to the spot. “I didn’t--” Leo began, but did not finish; instead he only forced his limbs to step him into the lift and grab Jim’s hand. “Okay,” he said simply; and Jim set his head back against Leo’s shoulder as the lift doors closed.

\-----

At the outset of the Enterprise’s second five-year mission, Sulu returned to his post after eight months on Vilix with well-worn hands and a PADD full of photos of Vilix’sita and their offspring, now numbering 14.

“It’s an experience,” he reported cheerfully; and it was clear by his tone that he thought it was the best experience ever.

(The family’s visits to the Enterprise, however, were decidedly _different experiences altogether_.)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic inspired by [a scene](http://kaitg.tumblr.com/post/53265681536/reason-1-324-789-of-why-i-love-this-show-this) in 3x14 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in which Sisko and Bashir are throwing a baby shower for an apparently asexually-reproducing crewmember named Vilix’pran. [There were suggestions](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Vilix%27pran%27s_species) that this _budding, plantlike_ species was not only asexually-reproducing but also agender, and I thought, hey! An agender plantperson?? That sounds right up Sulu’s alley! I bet he would’ve made a great co-parent to those plantbabies once budded.
> 
> And so: this.
> 
> I tried to leave the question open as to whether asexually-reproducing necessarily meant asexual-as-orientation. Choose your own adventure! I feel as though it’s potentially a cop-out not to state the asexual-as-orientation identifier overtly; but I also think that asexuality is a complex and multi-faceted identity that I didn’t want to overtly link or divorce from concepts of reproduction or gender identity, or include or exclude necessarily from what is clearly a romantic relationship. However you want to imagine Vilix’sita is a-okay, and I wrote the fic from a perspective external to the relationship partially to promote that imagination. Whether you decide that a species that reproduces asexually would have absolutely no reason or drive to be sexual but is still altogether keen on romance, or whether you decide that Sulu’s just ~so stoked~ that there’s a plant-hybrid humanoid species out there that they sort out how to check off that particular box on Sulu’s list of Really Awesome Sex Partners one way or another -- perfect! Excellent. Any option is good. Do that.
> 
> I do regret not featuring Vilix'sita more prominently, but this is a pitfall of fanfiction, I think, where people want to read the characters they know; I wasn't sure how to balance it so that it was something that more Trek fans would want to read. I also fell into the Jimbones pit a couple times, which is lately a daily hazard. There ought to be signage, honestly.
> 
> Finally, I imagine the Vilix language doesn’t gender, so I picked neutral pronouns in English amalgamated from two particularly common pronoun systems. One hopes that by the mid-23rd century some neutral pronouns are more commonly incorporated into Standard, and I figure that process will require some hybridization of existing language used to identify nonbinary folks.


End file.
